Reference paper:
LePine, J. A., Erez, A., & Johnson, D. E. (2002). The nature and dimensionality of organizational citizenship behavior: A critical review and meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(1), 52.Abstract:
(A 50-word quick summary from my understanding)
Study demonstrates strong relationships among most dimensions of OCBs and that the dimensions have equivalent relationships with predictors (satisfaction, organizational commitment, fairness, trait conscientiousness and leader support). While the authors suggest explicitly defining OCB as latent construct, they also acknowledge possibility of OCB as aggregate construct consistent with contextual performance.Quick Notes/queries:
(For my further delving)
Construct- Organ (1988) defined 'discretionary behavior' as a behavior that is not an enforceable requirement of the role or the job description and that the behavior is rather a matter of personal choice, such that its omission is not generally understood as punishable. Consider an individual in a group where 'helping' is a group norm. In such a context, though the employee may not be predisposed to altruism, he may engage in altruistic behaviors owing to perceived social costs of not adhering to the group norms. Is such an altruistic behavior, which is not a matter of personal choice, discretionary in nature?
- Borman and Motowidlo (1997) defined 'task performance' as the effectiveness with which job incumbents perform activities that contribute to the organization's technical core either directly or indirectly. In this context of contributing to the technical core, are there discretionary work behaviors that particularly enhance the task performance? For example - Consider tasks (such as ones involving research in ambiguous areas) where the expected aspects (such as quality or depth) of the outputs cannot be fully or accurately specified. Some individuals working on such tasks perhaps engage in discretionary behavior that pushes the boundary of expected contributions. Are such discretionary behaviors enhancing task performance condidered as OCBs? Can they be categorized under the 5 dimensions of OCB?
- Has OCB been conceptualized as a group-level construct?
Dimensions
- How does contextual factors moderate individual's engaging in certain OCBs as compared to others? Do certain contextual factors affect OCB-I more as compared to OCB-O (or the other way round0? For example - consider an employee who is not satisfied with the workplace. He might have been previosuly high on altruism and civic virtue dimensions, but owing to this low satisfaction may disengage from civic virtue (OCB- O), but not compromise on levels of altruism (OCB - I) owing to his relationship with others.
- How are voice and civic virtue dimensions of OCB related?
- How is trait conscientiousness related to OCB conscientiousness?
- How are challenge oriented behaviors - Voice and Taking charge - related to 5 dimensions of OCB and to each other?
- Do low scores on one OCB dimension (for example - helping) imply low OCB? It could be possible that given the contextual factors (for example - uniform competency of individuals in the group) helping might be low. However the low OCB score could be misleading as the individuals may be routinely engaging in voice and taking charge behaviors.
Similar constructs
- How are other OCB-like constructs (and their dimensions) in the nomological network - such as Prosocial organizational behavior and Extra-role behavior - related to OCB construct (and its 5 dimensions)?
- How are altruism dimension of OCB, interpersonal facilitation dimension of contextual performance and helping related?
- How is silence related to voice and other 5 dimensions of OCB?
- How is taking charge related to personal initiative?
Taxonomy of multi-dimensionality
- Law et al (1998) suggests that OCB as a multi-dimensional construct can be categorized as either a 'latent construct', 'aggregate construct', or 'profile construct'. Is each of the 5 dimensions a distinct form of an OCB (in which case it is an 'latent construct')? Or does it make theoretical sense to consider OCB as an algebraic function of the 5 OCB dimensions (in which case it is an 'aggregate construct')? Why does not the current study consider the 'profile construct' possibility? Similar to arguments put forth by the authors on how 'foci of commitment' is a 'profile construct', can OCB be seen as various combinations of the characteristics of its 5 dimensions?
- Do affiliative-promotive dimensions of extra-role behavior, as defined by Van Dyne et al (1995), suggest that extra-role behavior is a latent construct?
Construct validity
- In the OB literature, have there been constructs (similar to OCB) whose definitions were either assumed or ill-specified, but with the examining of empirical relationships the meaning of the construct was inferred, the measures were modified and construct re-defined post-hoc?